The Bristol 2006 Sound & Vision show

Introduction

It was my third Bristol hi-fi show this year, and I've enjoyed
this one even more than the previous two, as I am with TNT now and as such a
member of the press. For all of you who have never visited a hi-fi show: it
is basically a large hotel with in each room a sound system and a few guys trying
to demo and/or sell it to you. Heaven for nuts like me, perhaps not for many
others. The show itself was bigger than ever, with over 160 participants and
this year even a full floor reserved for audio-only, where screens were not
allowed. I'm not interested in home cinema myself, so this floor was of special
interest to me, and it was here that I spent most of my time. One of the advantages
of a special audio floor is that there is much less interference from neighbouring
rooms. On other floors there's usually a dinosaur stamping around in the next
room, which can distract the attention a bit, sometimes.

I will go through a number of rooms that caught my attention. Obviously, this
is a very personal choice and there were many other rooms with interesting products.

Linn

Linn had a nice big room with beautiful looking gear in it. Sadly, the sound
didn't inspire as much as the looks, but it has to be said that their stuff
does look really good, and they were playing loud processed pop when I was there.

Focal

Focal were playing their new Electra 1007 Be in a very stylish room, with a big
comfy sofa and good quality electronics with the dCS P8i CD player and top of the
range Naim pre and power amps. These speakers are reasonably affordable at about
£2300, and £3000 with matching stands. They made the impression of far more expensive
kit, with very good looks and stunning sound. Treble was obviously excellent,
as it was taken care of by the famous Beryllium tweeters. Compared to that the
bass was slightly less impressive, but very good nevertheless, certainly for their
modest size. The whole sound was very fast, transparent and dynamic. It really
made my foot tap. There's a fine balance between fast and detailed on one side
and bright and aggressive on the other, and Focal got it precisely right in this
room. You have to like this sort of exciting sound, but Focal do it better than
almost everyone else. The guy doing the demo was clearly of the same opinion and
thoroughly enjoying his job. Mind you, with lesser electronics the results could
be less enjoyable, given the reveiling nature of these speakers.

Living voice

This was my favourite room last year, and it didn't disappoint this time. No
wonder if you know that all electronics were Kondo. This year's set-up was almost
the same, except for a simpler turntable (SME model 10 instead of the massive
Kuzma Stabi XL). Mind you, that 'simple' turntable still had a Kondo cartridge,
which costs several times the price of the table and arm combined. Further down
the chain was a Kondo moving coil transformer, the Kondo KSL-M7 phono stage,
the M1000 line stage and a pair of Gakugh power amps. All valve gear, of course!
The loudspeakers were the Living Voice Avatar OBX R2, in a special version with
all custom cross-over components. Digital replay was taken care of by a Resolution
audio CD player, which sounded remarkable. That is, until a proper record was
put on the SME. Vinyl replay on this system was absolutely breathtaking and
left digital far behind. I have honestly never heard piano being reproduced
with such complete realism as in that room. The dynamics were unbelievable.
The piano was reproduced with complete scale and authority. At a certain point
I had to actually stop myself from joining the audience applauding, so convincing
and utterly absorbing was the experience. It far transcends hi-fi and it is
very difficult to say what it actually is that makes a system like this so brilliant.
In the end it's just so involving and musical that you forget about the system
and are just swept away by the music. Of course, this is not a very realistic
set, with a combined price of over £50,000, but that is not really the point.
It shows us what is possible and certainly inspired me.

And I haven't told you yet about the most exotic feature of this system! It
was all powered from batteries! Yes, you read that right. This whole chain of
fabulous hi-fi equipment wasn't connected to the mains, but got its power from
4 big gel batteries, of a size normally found in big lorries. In one of the
corners of the room a large panel was installed with a complete power station.
The power from the batteries was turned into 230 Volt AC by two big inverters.
An equally sized charger was installed next to these. Demonstrator Kevin also played
some music with the charger switched on to let us appreciate the difference.
It did indeed sound better without, but I actually also enjoyed it with the
charger, to be honest. And I'm not sure how representative a test it really
is. But impressive it was. The main reason for this rather extreme solution
is not only to get the most from a set, but mostly to enable people in areas
with really bad power to still use a high-end system, or for use on (very) luxurious
yachts, for example. Again, completely unrealistic, but instructive and very
enjoyable. Who needs reality if you can listen to a system like that!

Neat

Back in the real world, Neat demonstrated a pair of diminutive little Motive 2 speakers
that made more music that their sized suggested. Quite good, especially if you
like your speakers small and cute. Not everyone will like the tilted-back styling
perhaps, but they surprised me.

PINSh

No, not a typo, the name of the brand is PINSh. They demoed three floorstanding
speakers, each with a true ribbon tweeter of their own design. Within seconds
of arriving I was also handed an omni-directional super-tweeter. It looked quite
impressive, with a front and back ribbon mounted in a very solid magnet system.
Priced around £1500, they surely looked like they could do a very good job. Sadly
they were not being used in the demo. The impression of the PINSh speakers was
a bit bass heavy and uneven in my ears. The treble was very silky and detailed,
but the whole sound was dominated by the bass which was a bit too boomy and boxy
for my taste. It just sounded like the small woofers were relying on the ported
enclosure too much to produce enough bass. Not my way of voicing a speaker, I'm
afraid.

PMC

At PMC a very nice and compact floorstander, the GB1, was making very good music.
The sound was nice, full and punchy. The perfect sound for a party, that is
if you want your guest to dance. The 2 * 300 watts Bryston certainly helped
with that, as did the Bryston pre and the very classy TEAC CD player. Still,
that small £1150 loudspeaker could be one of the best value components I saw
at the show.

In the next room PMC were showing their Wafer speaker system. These are very
flat (about 4 inches, 10 cm, thick) panel-like speakers that can be mounted
on or in a wall. They were presented very stylishly on three wooden stands.
A subwoofer was added and the whole system actually sounded quite good. Certainly
something to consider if you can't (or don't want) to have speakers in your
room. The stands made the whole thing look very good, in my eyes, but were actually
just made for the show. More people had commented on them already, so perhaps
PMC should start selling them too.

Nordost

As a TNT reporter I did feel some apprehension when I entered the Nordost room.
Aren't we supposed to solder our own cables together, from network cable or
lightning conductor or so? Still, I cannot deny that Nordost is one of the most
important cable manufacturers at the moment, so I wanted to see what they could
do. They were demonstrating their new range of interconnects on a Naim CD player,
a Leema integrated amp and a pair of Leema Xavier speakers. They started at
the bottom of the range with the £300 Baldur and worked their way up to the
£2200 Valhalla leads. A bit of mildly amusing interaction happened when a guy
in the audience asked if they could also demonstrate an interconnect on the
impressive VPI turntable that was sitting on top of the rack. Sadly, it turned
out that the turntable had a fixed lead and could not be used with a Nordost
cable! After some commotion, in which I enjoyed taking part, the analogue lover
left, disappointed. A bit of a lost opportunity, I think, but it didn't change
the fact that the digital demo was actually quite convincing. I felt that the
biggest change happened when moving from the £300 Baldur to the £380 Heimdall.
The difference between these cables is that the Heimdall has double the number
of conductors and uses the new WBT nextgen phono plugs. I have been trying these
out myself recently and I am very impressed with them. And here again I heard
a clear improvement, over the whole spectrum. But, to be fair to Nordost, each
change, including the one to the ridiculously expensive Valhalla, was quite
noticeable. By that time, we are talking about an interlink that costs about
70% of what the CD player costs, so you can certainly doubt the cost-effectiveness
of such a combination, but I could not deny the fact that it still made a difference.
In the end, the two Nordost guys did a very good job defending their product,
I have to say, even if I think that some of it is a bit of a religion. Entertaining
nevertheless. And, you will not leave that room still thinking cables don't
make a difference!

Lyngdorf Audio

This was my other favourite room from last year, when they were still called
Tact audio. Lyngdorf was using their new CD transport/player, the CD-1, with
the TDA2200 full digital amplifier driving a pair of Dali speakers. The new
thing this year was the introduction of 'RoomPerfect'. This system can be installed
in the TDA2200 digital amp, for about £1200, and allows for full room correction.
I was told it is more powerful than their previous correction system. You can
correct globally, where the sound will be improved in the whole room, or there
is the possibility of a local optimisation, where a part of the room will get
even better sound. The best correction can be achieved when done for a specific
'hot seat'. Two such locations were available. I sat down in one of them and
the system was switched from no correction to global correction and finally
to correction for my seat only. The effect is a better bass sound and a
slight clearing up of the rest of the spectrum. The bass boom that the room
creates in addition to the bass coming from the speakers is more or less completely
removed. Initially this felt like there was less bass, but soon you realise
what is left is much more precise and natural. It would be a fantastic system
to try out at home, as I think the real effect will take a bit longer to sink
in than the 5 minutes we had for the demo. Of course, the sound of the Lyngdorf
set was excellent, even without correction. That TDA2200 amp is an unbelievable
machine, capable of tremendous power and control, but without sounding 'digital'
at all.

Naim

Naim had several rooms, one of which contained all their top equipment. The electronics
consisted of 6 boxes: the new, and very costly CD555 CD player, the NAC 552 pre-amp
and de NAP 500 power amp, each with their own separate power supply. They were playing
through a pair of Naim DBL speakers. The whole sound was a little bit too Naim
for me to really appreciate, and as all the other people in the room were having
a conversation with their backs to the speakers, I guess I wasn't the only one.
In contrast with rooms like Living Voice, where everyone in the room is just mesmerised
by the sound, this was a strangely disconnected event. Perhaps I came at the wrong
time, who knows.

Eclipse

Eclipse were introducing their new, more affordable, TD510 speakers. These
are a smaller version of the 512 and TD712 speakers. They have a similar, egg-shaped
enclosure, but smaller cones, at 10 cm instead of 12 cm for the bigger models.
I've always been a big fan of the Eclipse full range speakers. They keep amazing
me with their natural and holographic sound. At first it is always difficult
to believe that such a small cone is capable of producing the bass you hear.
I keep finding myself looking for the sub woofer. Not that these speakers produce
such deep and powerful bass, but they do seem to be able to make up for what
they lack with fantastic speed and accuracy in the bass. It is not the sort
of bass that makes the floor vibrate, but it does have impact. And spatially
these are amongst the best speakers available. I always enjoy watching the surprised
looks on the faces of the people who sit down to listen to these speakers. When
you sit in the sweet-spot, which is admittedly not very big, everything clicks
into focus and the sound stage is just amazing. The little TD510 speakers were
doing the usual good job, and as a bonus they only cost about £1800, including
the very nice matching stands, or about £1200 without. Sadly, the stand doesn't
allow you to hide the speaker cable in it, spoiling the good looks a bit, but
apart from that this seems like a very attractive new speaker from Eclipse.

Conclusion

Judging by the number of units you see Arcam and Naim are by far the most popular
brands at the Bristol show. Not only are these brands very well represented themselves,
but many other companies seem to use their electronics to combine with their own
units. On the other hand, you do not see very much valve gear, fancy record players
or other exotic stuff. It is there all right, but the bulk of the show is digital
and transistor based. Also, a large proportion of rooms is now filled with cinema
surround set-ups. Two-channel sound, certainly analogue, seems to be in the minority
nowadays. I personally think that is a shame, but I have to admit that there's
still more than enough around for me to enjoy, so I shouldn't complain.

I thoroughly enjoyed this year's Bristol show. There's something for everyone
there, and the atmosphere is relaxed and friendly. Who could ask for more?